Late Night Talk
by SilverWolf7
Summary: Sequel to Bridging the Gap. Jackie thinks on her past before and after the Doctor entered her life. The Doctor talks more of his and Rose's adventures together, and himself.


Disclaimer – None of the characters are mine, they all belong to the BBC.

Sequel to Bridging the Gap.

Late Night Talk

The night seemed to drag along, and Jackie was finding it hard to fall asleep from the excitement of the day. Her mind kept on racing through the thoughts of those talks she had had with an old friend, gone now, moved away before the Doctor had come into her and Rose's life. Feelings that she thought long gone from her childhood dredged up from wherever they had been hiding with a few simple words from the alien currently sleeping on the couch in the living room.

The Doctor had tried to kill himself but couldn't do it. Her friend's father had killed himself. All for the same reason. War. It seemed to destroy everything it touched. Even those who weren't even remotely connected to it.

She remembered the time when the Slitheen were trying to destroy the earth, to sell its broken and drifting pieces off to the highest bidders. That had almost started a war...with nothing. There was nothing up there, or so the Doctor said, and she believed him, because who else would have known better. And because those ugly creeps had put the Earth on high alert for an alien invasion, the world had believed there was something up there.

The mind can see things that aren't there, but were blind to things right in front of them. The human mind liked to forget things it cannot understand. The Doctor was right, they were stupid.

And that hurt. Because it was her species, her race, her world. And the voices of a tiny few trying to tell the truth were pushed aside by a bunch of aliens wanting to destroy the world using the bodies of influential people.

All because the human race wasn't ready to believe in the truth of aliens yet were willing to blow up those things they didn't understand, even if they weren't there at the time.

Stupid. Thick. Idiotic.

The Doctor had a hundred words for it probably and every one of them was right.

And then came Christmas Day, in which the Doctor had changed his face, was incapacitated and that time there really had been an alien invasion, and the world had depended once more on those tiny few who had tried to tell the truth the first time. Harriett Jones and Rose Tyler, Mickey Smith with them. And the Doctor unconscious because of his change going wrong.

And the world had been saved in part because of her, Jackie Tyler, and a silly cup of tea.

The Doctor and Rose had stayed until after New Year's Day, taking a well earned break, and a good long rest from trouble. It had been a good few days for her, having her daughter home and the Doctor was much nicer to her in this incarnation she found.

He had stayed in that crazy ship of his during the nights, sleeping or fixing the circuits that shorted from said tea spilling on it, but had spent the days inside her flat with her and Rose, resting mainly, but not sleeping. Mainly watching television, eating meals and generally trying to catch his metaphorical breath.

He had been trying to figure out who he was. A bit rude, hyperactive like a child on a sugar rush, and with a temper that was hard to get him into but was not something one wanted to be on the receiving end of. And he talked. A lot. He either loved his voice, or just couldn't help it.

Turning over to face the wall, she remembered Elton too, the young man who had been a great comfort when Rose was gone. She had trusted him with a lot, and thought he was a great guy, and then one day she had gotten a call from Rose and had ruined everything by wanting to be nice.

She had only wanted to pay for the pizzas, and had been slipping the money into the pocket of his jacket when she had found the picture of Rose, one of her daughter standing in front of the TARDIS, and she immediately knew, knew that this man who she had thought she had known was after the Doctor, was using her, using Rose, to get to the alien she had put her trust in.

And there was no way she would put his life in danger any more than she would have put Rose's life in jeopardy.

She had confronted Elton, sent him packing, and immediately called Rose's mobile and had a talk to both her and the Doctor about the little twerp.

Rose had been upset, had come home for a few days again, and the Doctor was quiet the entire time, stewing in a corner. He kept peeking out the windows, looking towards the TARDIS, even though the group LINDA had definitely been disbanded, considering most of the members were dead, one was now a piece of concrete, and only Elton was left the way he was.

She had the strangest feeling the Doctor blamed himself for that mess.

And now she was stuck in her own past and memories, brought about once more by the Doctor. Damn that alien, he could really be very annoying when he wanted to be. But it wasn't his fault. He had needed to let this out for a long time, and he had finally cracked.

A low knock on her door was heard and she turned back around to face it, in time to see the Doctor poke his head through to peek in. There were wet tear tracks on his face, but it looked like he had stopped crying for the time being.

"Did I wake you," he asked quietly, his voice just above a whisper, not wanting to wake Rose up she thought.

"No, I was just thinking," she said back, petting her bed beside her.

He shuffled in, quietly closing the door behind him, making sure it barely clicked. He sat himself down, looking slightly uncomfortable, but so much like a lost little boy, that she couldn't help but let him in. He sat there, his chin on his knees, arms wrapped around his legs, trying to make himself as small as possible.

She sat up and hugged him with the arm closest to him. She watched as he closed his eyes, sighed slightly and leaned into her.

"Why are you in here?" she asked, reaching up and freeing a bit of his wayward hair from his face where it had gotten stuck to the drying tears on his face.

"I didn't want to disturb Rose. She was sleeping..."

Jackie couldn't help but smile. It was so plainly obvious that he cared a great deal for her daughter.

"I don't know why...I just need, I want..." He stopped talking, instead leaning even more into her side, and she automatically pulled him closer. He curled up to her, one hand unclenching from around his legs to grip her shoulder.

"Nightmare?" she asked, not too sure if he was wanting to really talk or not. He had always been good at keeping things pretty close to his chest.

He nodded. "Stupid really. Just a normal, stupid nightmare. I can't even remember it now. First time since Mickey had left I manage to get some proper sleep and I have some stupid normal thing like that..."

Jackie winced. No wonder Rose had looked so worried for the Doctor and had decided he needed some proper rest. That had been well over a month ago. "What happened?"

"I can't remember, I told you that, Jackie."

"Not in the nightmare. To make you stop sleeping? You know, to bring back the memories to a point where you couldn't ignore them"

The Doctor was silent for a few long minutes. "I think it might have been the TARDIS. She almost died halfway through a flight, and we fell and crashed through the void into a parallel world, which should be impossible now. The others wanted to explore, I told them no. Spent most of the first few hours there wandering around the console room, thinking she was completely dead, but there was still one tiny bit of light, of life left. If I hadn't spotted that...she's all I have left Jackie."

She couldn't possibly understand. She had said that to him earlier today, about what it must feel like to be in war, or to be part of a family broken by it. And while this man, this alien, was taking Rose away from her for most of the time, with no guarantees that he could keep her safe, she still had friends to talk to, still had her tiny flat, still had her people and world. The Doctor had lost everything.

"Oh, I'm sorry," and then she grabbed hold of the words he had said and jerked him away from her to look into his face. "What do you mean by that?! The TARDIS almost died halfway through a flight? You just...fell? No idea what would happen?!"

The Doctor looked up at her with wide eyes. "Ah, yes, well, I thought Rose told you. She was upset. She had lost Mickey after all, he had decided to stay there and take over Ricky's place, and...and in a way she had lost you."

"She held me and cried and kept on saying 'you're here, you're alive!' well, now that makes more sense...but how did you get the TARDIS back to working?"

"I gave her some of my own life force. Lost at least ten years off this life, but it was completely worth it."

Jackie blinked at him. He was telling the truth, she could tell. He usually either didn't speak or told an outright obvious lie to her if he was avoiding telling the truth. But right now he was being completely serious. He had died to save Rose not long ago, and he had just cut this life short trying to save his ship.

Well, if anything, she definitely knew he was committed to those he cared for.

It was one of the reasons she had decided to trust him with Rose. Because while he really couldn't promise to keep her safe all the time, he would do anything to keep her safe, to save her from trouble. Even if it meant dying to save Rose's life, he would do it.

She leant down a bit and kissed him on the forehead. He looked up at her with those chocolate brown eyes of his and smiled. Not that mad smile of his which showed off his teeth, but a small smile, a true smile, and she was sure right then that the only person to ever see him smile like that was Rose.

Hugging him close to her again, she let herself smile. She had never thought that this would ever happen. They lapsed into silence for a while. Jackie really doubted she would get much, if any sleep that night, and she didn't know what the Doctor was thinking.

"I couldn't fall back to sleep. Too alone. I hate feeling alone. When I was young, it was bad enough, but when everything was so freshly...gone, it felt like I was drowning in it."

"What happened?"

"I found a life line and grabbed hold. It was all I could do. I wasn't expecting it, wasn't looking for it, but I found it anyway. I...can't let go. Not yet anyway. But if she wanted to stop, I would take her back here in a heartbeat."

"Rose..." she whispered the name, and she felt the Doctor nod against her.

"She saved me!" the Doctor stated, his voice oddly filled with a tone she had never heard before. "She didn't know it, I don't know if she does now, but she did. I grabbed hold of her hand, told her to run, and in that instant, I had something other than myself. And she stayed with me. Even after our first little trip, when I was trying to impress her."

Jackie chuckled. "What happened then and where exactly did you take her?"

"I took her to see the end of this world. 5 billion years into your future, the sun became a red giant and Earth became nothing but bits of rock and dust."

Jackie looked down at him sharply and looked deep into his eyes. "You...you didn't do that just to impress her did you?"

The Doctor froze, before slowly shaking his head, no. "I wanted someone else to feel like I did. It was a stupid thing to do I know, but I just needed...someone to _know_."

He started to quietly cry again, and she held him like she felt she had been doing all day. She didn't say anything to him, just let him get on with what he needed to do.

"Ugh, I can't stop crying," he stated not too long afterwards, wiping at his eyes.

She laughed quietly and petted the top of his head like he was a child. "Well, what do you expect? You go years bottling things up and then expect to just get over it like that?" she clicked her fingers together.

He shrugged got up, apologised for being a pest and walked back out to the living room. She thought he would leave, but instead of hearing the door, she heard the television turn on and the volume lowered so as not to wake up Rose.

Within minutes she found herself drifting off to sleep.


End file.
